Leslie Keiling is the traffic reporter on the Steve Cochran show and the John Williams show every weekday afternoon on WGN-Radio. Before landing at WGN, Leslie and I worked together twice; on Steve & Garry's show at WLUP AM 1000, and on The John Landecker Show on WJMK. In addition to Steve & Garry and Landecker, Leslie has worked with just about every major radio star in Chicago over the past...ahem...twenty years.She also happens to be a very gifted (and funny) writer. She was kind enough to contribute this piece about her mother to the blog. I'm sure many of you will be able to relate...
Entertaining Helen
by Leslie Keiling
I can't believe it's been almost three years since my mom Helen moved in with my husband Tim, daughter Allyson and me. It was a long time coming--what with her vision problems, heart problems, hearing loss, hip replacement, scoliosis. Ok, you get the picture. Funny, the minute you start talking about the issues of the elderly, you can almost smell the mustiness, with just a faint touch of medicine chest and Tegrin for character. There is certainly nothing glamorous about shower chairs and pill cutters, pressure sores and ingrown hairs. Some might even find these topics a little nauseating. Go figure.
In response, Tim, Ally and I have learned not to focus too hard on the down and dirty day-to-day stuff. What happens in Grandma's bathroom, stays in Grandma's bathroom. That is, unless she decides to bring it up at dinner. To help avoid this, we've learned to steer mealtime conversations away from gateway topics like "skin," "digestion," or "legumes." You learn to adjust. You take the good with the bad, and you work around it.
However, there is one aspect of my mother's care that has affected the fabric of this family down to the finest fiber of it's being; and that's a little thing we refer to as "Grandma's Entertainment."
To call my mom's eyesight poor would be an understatement. Macular degeneration has left her with nothing more than a hint of peripheral vision, so that things like watching TV and reading books the old-fashioned way are out of the question. But necessity being the mother of invention and all, we didn't give up. And just by chance we happened upon a little miracle. While most TV is too difficult for Helen to follow--sounds and pictures swirling in a busy blur--things are somehow entirely different when we're talking about Chicago Cubs baseball.
For over 85 years, the woman has shared the dream of so many other unrequited lovers of those North Side boys of summer--a dream that still burns brightly deep within that congested little heart of hers. Based on my mom's fervent commitment and nearly crazed determination, not to mention plenty of trial and error on our part, we have found a way to keep the Cubs in her life.
The set up must be precise. Helen must be seated in a wingback chair with a small throw pillow centered on the back cushion. The chair must then be placed exactly three and a half feet from the 52-incher. As Helen is seated, a nearby radio tuner is then set to WGN. This is very important. Unfortunately, the play-by-play heard on the television is presented in an unacceptable sound range. However, the tonal blend of Pat Hughes and Ron Santo, along with the dancing shadows on a field of green, amazingly create the perfect confluence that brings the games into heavenly clarity for mom.
Did I mention that the sound has to be turned up loud? I mean really loud. Really, really loud. The kind of loud that makes the dog hide under the bed. It kind of hurts everyone's ears, but it's baseball. And it's only about 150 games per season. When you break it down, it's really not that much. There is still a lot of time in any given day, week or year when there is no baseball.
And this leads us to Helen's only other, yet much beloved, form of entertainment: Porno. Yep, porno, as in pornography. When there's no baseball, there's always porno. Oh, nothing so crass as films and photos. This is pornography wearing the disguise of contemporary literature, presented to the masses through "books on tape." God love books on tape. Mom's outlook on life did a 180 the day she realized that losing her sight didn't mean having to give up her books.
Many of the same titles she read over and over prior to her vision loss were still available to her on CD and cassette, read by fine actors and vocal artistes. The problem is that there is only one type of book--bound or recorded--that mom likes, and that is the Romance Novel. Specifically, a type of historical romance known to aficionados as "bodice rippers."
These stories, written by authors like Roberts, Lindsey and Garwood, are set in locations like the old west, English manors, and ships at sea, anywhere in time from the 1500's to the early 1900's. Yet, they all have one thing in common. Somewhere in the course of boy meeting girl, boy losing girl, and the ultimate promise of love everlasting, there are at a minimum, two or three hot, crazy, steamy explicit sexual encounters. And let me tell you, these folks don't hold back. We're talking pages of passages involving words like throbbing, taut, wet, lapping, riding, core, tumescence, and waves. Anyone care for a cigarette?
Now, we're all adults here. We've all read items of a mature nature. But generally speaking, these moments take place inside our heads. Even if your lips move when you read, subject matter like this stays inside your noggin. That is, unless you are enjoying the aforementioned passages as presented by books on tape. Imagine someone like Edward James Olmos sitting in your living room reading Penthouse Forum at the top of his lungs. Imagine Glenn Close belting out the closed captioning from any pornographic film you can think of. It's a whole lot of way-too-loud way-too-information served up by none other than my 91-year old mother.
Perhaps the oddest part of all is that Helen doesn't really seem to notice. She gets so blissfully lost in the book that it's hard for her to undertand how this might be perceived by those within earshot. Within earshot, by the way, includes anyone inside our house and anyone passing our house on a day when the windows are open.
You should have seen my neighbor's eyes bulge the day she was served up a heaping helping of bedroom gymnastics just because she chose the wrong time to head to the mailbox. Needless to say, we've spoken to Helen about the matter. I kindly explained that she might unwittingly be presenting inappropriate material to an unappreciative audience...or scarier still, an audience that enjoys it too much. I explained that broadcasting this sort of stuff can get you arrested, and that considering the volume involved, she's pretty close to achieving broadcast status. In theory she is in agreement. In everyday practice, however, she's not quite so clear. I remind her regularly, but can't bring myself to harp or browbeat.
Headphones? We've tried them, but even the lightest pair "squeeze my head like a vice," she says.
Not so long ago, my daughter brought over her boyfriend. As we spoke in the kitchen, a pair of characters in one of mom's books began an intimate interlude...a loud intimate interlude. As I dashed to the other room to intervene, Ally yelled out what has become her regular response to these occasions; "You know, I'm probably going to need therapy because of this."
Maybe. Or maybe she'll just look back and laugh.
That's Leslie in the middle of the guys from the John Landecker Morning Show. We used to recreate some of the scenes from her mother's romance novels on the air as a regular bit...until the program director told us to stop.
Leslie was there in the Dominican Republic as Bridget and I renewed our vows on our tenth anniversary in 2001. We did it live on the air. That's John Landecker on the left, and if you look closely, you can see my two oldest boys Tommy and Johnny too. They were crawling all over us during the ceremony. (Sean was born the next year.)If you want to read any of my previous guest bloggers, click here: http://rickkaempferguestbloggers.blogspot.com
Coming next week...A very funny guy who was recently named as one of the "40 under 40 Attorneys To Watch" by Chicago Daily Law Bulletin: Shawn Wood. He's written a funny piece about lawyers in the movies.
